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Healey wants to allow a single position to earn both a government pension and full-time salary
If passed, the change would allow Municipal Police Training Committee Executive Director Robert Ferullo to earn both a $150,000 salary and his municipal pension.
Gov. Maura Healey is looking to exempt a single position from laws that block government retirees from cashing in on both their state-funded pension and a full-time salary from the state.
Healey proposed in the budget last month to exempt the executive director of the Municipal Police Training Committee from the current post-retirement employment limits. As of now, the annual 1,200 hour cap, which was raised by former Gov. Charlie Baker in 2021, is set on pension-earning government retirees who go back to work in the public sector.
The 1,200 hours amounts to approximately a 23-hour work week.
“There is significant benefit to having an experienced leader who has spent their career in law enforcement serve as Executive Director of the MPTC to train the next generation of police,” said Karissa Hand, a spokesperson for Healey. “This proposed change aims to improve our ability to recruit and retain qualified talent for this important position.”
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The MPTC is a state agency that works with municipal, transit, environmental, and campus police on training standards. The MPTC said they’ve trained more than 20,000 serving officers at police academies in Boylston, Plymouth, Holyoke, Lynnfield, and Randolph.
The current executive director of the MPTC is Robert Ferullo, a former Woburn Police Chief. If passed, the change would allow him to earn both a $150,000 salary and a municipal pension. Ferullo is also a Woburn city councilor, which earns him a $12,000 stipend per year.
The move to exempt Ferullo’s position from earning caps isn’t a new one. There have been proposed bills to that effect in the state legislature since 2021. Ferullo joined the MPTC in 2019 as interim executive director.
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Inspector General Jeffrey Shapiro is against the bill and Healey’s proposal. In October, he sent his remarks to lawmakers, calling the exemption “concerning.”
Shapiro had another chance on Wednesday to testify to the House and Senate Committees on Ways & Means, when he said the proposal is “contrary to the purpose of a public pension.”
“When the ‘best and only’ person for the job is a retiree, then we have failed to implement basic principles of business succession planning and knowledge transfer, which are essential elements for continuity of operations,” Shapiro said. “Creating exemptions, rather than addressing the root problem, creates different rules for different people, most often those who earn the most money and/or with the know-how to seek such an exemption.”
Methuen mayor raises objections
Last year, the MPTC and Ferullo in his role as executive director were implicated after the former police chief of the Methuen Police Department hired someone who was massively unqualified to join the department as an officer.
Former Methuen Police Chief Joseph Solomon, who was indicted last fall, allegedly reached out to the MPTC to aid him in hiring the man. A city-funded investigation found that Ferullo failed to stop the hiring.
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“The investigation will show that the senior staff at the (training committee) including the director himself, intentionally stalled, hindered, and impeded this investigation,” the report said.
Methuen Mayor Neil Perry is upset by the potential change to Ferullo’s earnings due to the MPTC’s role in the scandal, according to the Eagle Tribune.
“I am outraged at this bill, outraged, and I am going to call everybody and I’m asking you to do the same thing,” Perry said at a local city council meeting last year. “Call your local legislators and tell them to vote no on H256 if it comes before them.”
Ferullo and the MPTC did not return a request for comment.
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